04 December, 2006

Comments I Was TRYING To Make At Tiny Cat Pants

These are somewhat abbreviated, but they're generally what I was trying to say. For some reason, squarespace eats all my comments.

1. Am I the only person who thinks the term "white trash" is racist? Cause I kinda do. Maybe not as bad as "N....." but getting close.

2. This whole shaving/waxing of adult women's body parts down to the nub is really kinda gross. I mean, it just sorta screams "Hey, you! Prepubescent is teh SEXXXAYYY!!!." It communicates a whole level of puritanicallism that strikes me as ironic. Sure it's fine to flash your business all over the street but then you must insist that said businesss is completely hairless. Hairless=sexually immature=virgin. In short, shaved body parts are supposed to indicate purity, I think. Like saying "Look! I'm a child bride!". Of course the women who are putting these goods on offer in the marketplace are a few steps removed from virginity, hence the irony. And as another commenter (who can actually comment at TCP) said, it looks less like a woman and more like a mannequin. Exactly.

3. Jamey, I think that thinking about the archaeology of Biblical artifacts is an interesting hobby. But it just seems like too many people are looking for these earthly things to either prove or disprove an argument that should be made in an entirely different context. Christianity is, in the main, a faith. And I think those who are skeptical about this latest discovery are probably the same people who think that the Shroud of Turin has no bearing on whether or not Jesus was crucified and resurrected as an atonement for sin.

23 Comments:

I have a self-imposed ban on chiming in on matters of race (perhaps I'll post about it tomorrow, my reasons aren't what you might think), but I'll break it long enough to let you know that you are absolutely on the money when it comes to the phrase 'white trash'.

Never got the shaved netherparts thing. But then again, I never got the 'thong' thing either.

Finally, I think it would be an interesting study to look into how the Judeo Christian God gave us just enough physical proof to give us reason to believe, but purposefully (I believe) ensured that no relics of the Lord would be left behind because it is human nature to turn our worship to the relics themselves.

Hard to comment here without being gross...shaved is weird, but trimmed is the ticket. It's cleaner, or at least seems so, and, well, no one wants likes to make that sound an errant hair can cause. Sorry, you brought it up.

White trash does not refer to white people per se, though I think trailer trash is redundant. I've always believed the term meant that these particular white folks were deemed unworthy of the perks that regular white folks expect, because they were uneducated, or poor, or both.

I agree with Mack about "white trash"--that it means "these particular white folks deemed unworthy of the perks that regular white folks expect, because they were uneducated, or poor, or both."

I think it carries the same kind of psychic weight as racial slurs, but I don't think it's one, since it's mostly used by white people to disparage other white people. I think it's one of our few openly classist slurs with enough heft to really hurt.

I think it's one of our few openly classist slurs with enough heft to really hurt.

Classist. That's probably a better description of it, I suppose.

Although the first time I ever heard the phrase it was used by a black person. In a book. Mammy referrs to Emmy Slattery (or the Slatterys in general) as "no-count poor white trash." So was that a black person's point of view or Margaret Mitchell's opinion of a black person's POV? Definitely the latter, I guess.

While I'm not a fan of name-calling (except for some nutso-butt people that I refer to as "nutso-butts") I think "Trailer trash" is more fair. You can be any colour and live in a trailer and be lazy and good for nothing.

But really, it's just better to say "That person there is lazy and good for nothing" than it is to generalise. I say that as a person whose husband spent a large part of his life growing up in a trailer. If he ever heard me say "Trailer Trash" I think I'd be divorced.

I agree about white trash. Trash is trash--why indicate if it's white as if white trash is better than all other trash?

And I agree about the waxing issue. I think it's gross for a man to want a hairless woman because it screams "pedophile" to me. And just to address any issue of hypocriticism, I dated a guy once who went "bald" and I hated it. Men should not do that. They need to hide their junk even more than we do. Granted, I don't think every person should necessarily sport a jungle downstairs, but keep it natural looking, y'all.

You can be any colour and live in a trailer and be lazy and good for nothing.

I don't understand how calling anyone trailer trash is better than calling them white trash. If you want to be rude and insulting, be rude and insulting.

To me, "white trash" isn't as insulting as "trailer trash" because maybe they can't help but live in a trailer, if that's all they can afford, and maybe they're nice people with good family values, so why make it out to seem that all people who live in trailers are trash? Being "white trash" can be avoided - you don't have to go around chewing tabacco and picking your ass in public and being an ignorant bastard, etc., etc., etc.,... people CHOOSE to do those things and they choose to act like morons, so why not just point it out for what it is? Britney Spears = white trash.

And the shaving thing? Not always is it because of some prepubescent fantasy, to some (ahem) it feels cleaner. And it is - the chances of getting a yeast infection when it's shaved or waxed is pretty slim because there's no hair to hold the sweat and other wetnesses in.

I don't understand how calling anyone trailer trash is better than calling them white trash.

It isn't. It only removes the racist element, leaving the classist element.

No, faith is not "the believing in something, despite evidence to the contrary." It's the believing in something in the absence of clear proof. Big difference.

For the most part. But I still think there are things we have faith in, despite evidence to the contrary. We have clear evidence that virgin births and resurrection are both impossible. Yet we believe that each thing has happened. We have faith in the testimony of God. We have faith that God is bigger than earthly tangibles.

So I suppose both are right. I would say that there is no clear evidence to the contrary that Mary was a virgin and that Jesus and assorted others were raised from the dead.

And the shaving thing? Not always is it because of some prepubescent fantasy, to some (ahem) it feels cleaner. And it is - the chances of getting a yeast infection when it's shaved or waxed is pretty slim because there's no hair to hold the sweat and other wetnesses in.

I said "to some it feels cleaner," not that it is most definitely cleaner. And while some GYNs advice against hair removal, some also say that it's fine to do with it what works for you. But my point was that it's all a personal choice and not necessarily related to a prepubescent fantasy.